Saturday, 3 June 2017

Exploration

1. Critically review a local art/ design exhibition in-depth. Discuss it in terms of its curatorial goals and exhibition design with related research.

Malaysia has many art and design exhibition, but not all are well-known by people. Below are the art/design exhibition that gave me strong impression:

Sasaran Art Festival was initially organised by two artists who wanted to create an art scene in Sasaran, a fishing village near Klang, Kuala Lumpur. Different than other art exhibitions held in high-end galleries, artworks for this festival are not only displayed in exhibition room, but also on the street, above the buildings, or parks in the village. Besides, Sasaran villagers also participated in creating artworks despite the professional artists. This is a art activity that aimed to teach people appreciate art and bring it into their life.

Urbanscape is an art exhibition targeted to youngsters in Malaysia, which they see it as a cool and hipster activity to do with friends. The objective is bring together the communities from field of music, art and design. It is supported by commercial brands. The art works not only reflect to society current issue and personal issue, it also includes experimental art such as lighting installation on Urbanscape 2017.

Art Expo Malaysia is large scale art exhibition that has a longest history in Southeast Asia. It is aimed to promote art in selling art piece and get people exposed to art.

I am going to research more on this question as I have most interest into it.

2. Compare and contrast the relationship of celebrities with their fans in two different creative communities. Which one is relatively more healthy in their connections?

Eminem the rapper had a stalker fans named Slim who wrote letters and threaten him that he will suicide if Eminem does not respond him. In the end he committed suicide after killing his pregnant girl friend. Eminem wrote a song title "Stan", a combination of word "stalker" and "fan" to talk about this incident and warn his fans that there has limit in worshiping idols. He wrote the song into dialogue form between him and Slim, the lyrics below are the letter that Slim sent to him:

Hey, Slim, that's my girlfriend screamin' in the trunk
But I didn't slit her throat, I just tied her up, see, I ain't like you
‘Cause if she suffocates she'll suffer more, and then she'll die too
Well, gotta go, I'm almost at the bridge now
Oh shit, I forgot, how am I supposed to send this shit out?!
(Eminem, 2000)

In contrast, there are many people was motivated by Eminem's music, such as his song "Not Afraid" that talked about him beating drug addict and "Mockingbird" that promising to give his daughter a good life. His music tells people that they are not alone in suffering struggle.

3. Examine the issue of cultural appropriation within a domain of beauty, fashion or music industry. Why are some communities cautious of, or against this practice?

Diagram 2: The skateboarders might think people who just wears Thrasher Tee are superficial.

Diagram 3: Rihanna in her and Coldplay's "Princess of China" music video.

When we talk about cultural appropriation, first issue that came into my mind is the skateboard enthusiates who accuse that people follow fashion trend blindly without knowing the rationale behind of the brand was originally about passion in skateboard. Besides, European music video or movie that has Asian tradition culture element also did not use it well, such as redesign the traditional cloths into sexy appealing because it is cater to audience.

Skateboard community against this trend because skateboarders themselves are passionate and works hard to acquire the skills, they developed their own style to make themselves different with others. Therefore if somebody imitate them without understanding the real culture and idea, definitely they feel offended.

4. What are some issues and best practices for design in multilingual communities? Write from the perspective of either a graphic designer or interactive designer.

Graphic designer's mission is help products to communicate with public. In order to make consumer from different background to understand product message, designers from different country need to consider the most effective way to communicate in different cultural background. Malaysia is a good example of country practicing multilingual design due to its muti-cultural background. Malaysia product packaging comes in variation of language especially daily-consume product such as snacks and packaged drinks. Besides using literal language, sign as universal language is also effective no matter the audience is literate. Road sign is one of the good example of universal language.

5. Explore a variety of media is used within the context of branding or transmedia storytelling. Does variety dilute the effectiveness of an advertising campaign or story?

In branding campaign design, media used is separate into two categories which are Above the Line (ATL) and Below the Line (BTL). ATL is high-end media which costs more such as TV commercial and outdoor billboard, while BTL is refer to lower end media such as flyers and mall stand. These two categories is targeted to different audience so that branding campaign can reach the potential consumer from every angle in their daily life. It is a marketing strategy that designer should know and it can be used to approach this research question.